Olympic Winter Games - Day 10 - WOMEN’S SEMI-FINALS

Sweden’s Anette Norberg kept her hopes of as successful defence of her Olympic title alive with a convincing 9-4 win over China’s world champions, led by Bingyu Wang.

Sweden will line up in the final against Canada’s Cheryl Bernard, who beat Switzerland’s Mirjam Ott by 6-5 in the other semi-final.

Norberg’s team was in charge throughout their game. They opened with a single and followed that with two single steals to be 3-up after three ends.

China got on the scoreboard with a single in the fourth, but Sweden moved further ahead, scoring three in the fifth. Sweden took another three in the eighth for 9-3 and when China could only score one in the ninth, the games was conceded.

Speaking about now having the chance to win her second Olympic gold, Norberg said, “of course nothing can compare with winning a first gold but to win another gold would be amazing”.

In the Canada–Switzerland semi-final, the eighth end proved critical. Switzerland’s Ott scored just one in the end rather than the two that would have levelled the game at 5-5.

Bernard then made a difficult take-out on the Swiss shot stone to score one in the ninth. In the tenth, once again Ott could only manage one to go down by 5-6 and put Canada into the gold medal game.

Afterwards, Bernard said, “it was a tight game and it seemed the stress finally creeped in. We felt the nerves but we came through and made the shots we needed”.

China and Switzerland now play-off for bronze at 9.00am local time on Thursday 26th, and the gold medal game between Canada and Sweden starts at 3.00pm local time that afternoon.